Guy Farmer: Hunter Biden’s Secret Art Sale

Why would anyone pay up to $ 500,000 for a painting by a hitherto unknown American artist named Hunter Biden? The mainstream media doesn’t ask that question, so I will.
A New York art gallery owner will auction Hunter’s works to anonymous buyers for prices ranging from $ 70,000 to $ 500,000. But then again, why would someone pay that kind of money for paintings by someone who produces their works by blowing paint through a straw? I will avoid further comments except to point out that the president’s 51-year-old son is a recovering drug addict.
Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and senior ethics adviser to former President Obama, said the secret art auction raised serious ethical questions. “I’m not very happy with that, and I would have done things differently,” he said. “The basic principle is transparency. Any arrangement where things are kept secret, people just don’t trust.” Skeptics might call it influence peddling.
A Wall Street Journal editorial echoed Painter and said that “the White House would work with Hunter’s lawyer on a strategy to avoid ethical compromises. Here it is: keep it all a secret. Yes, for real, that’s the plan. Painter added that “the best way for Hunter Biden to proceed would be to postpone the sale of his works until his father is no longer in office,” and I agree.
Journal columnist Holman Jenkins speculated that people who buy Hunter’s art might tell him “who just bought his art” and that a buyer might “come back later as a Hunter’s guest at a White House event, ”casting doubt on his father’s identity. promise to lead “the most ethical administration” in American political history.
We should be worried about Hunter Biden’s latest business venture because of his past dealings with corrupt Ukrainian, Chinese and Russian companies. He was paid up to $ 80,000 per month by a corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, even though he had no experience in the energy sector. And then there were those questionable million-dollar investment deals involving shadowy Chinese, Mexican and Russian companies, currently under investigation by federal officials – believed to be Biden’s Justice Department – and authorities in the United States. ‘State.
As Jenkins noted, Hunter’s business dealings are “ridiculously detailed and well-documented disclosures of (his) laptop released over the past nine months by the New York Post and the UK Daily Mail,” although our media mainstream people have tried to ignore the sleazy of the laptop. , and possibly illegal, disclosures. “Our ‘official newspapers’ (the New York Times and the Washington Post) become something else when they conspire to deny the facts and hide the truth,” Jenkins concluded.
So we might suspect, as the Journal and Jenkins do, that Hunter Biden is selling access to the White House through a secret art auction. The Conservative Journal gave some wise advice: “Hunter can keep painting, but for at least the next four years the best advice his father could give his son would be to do it for the love of the art, not for the money, ”but Hunter and the president’s younger brother, James, seem to like to profit from their last name.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has said Hunter Biden has the right to earn a living in his new profession and has defended the secret art auction because it “offers a level of protection and protection. transparency”. Nonetheless, “Selling art to anonymous buyers is ‘genius bribery’,” said Peter Schweitzer, author of a book on lucrative trade deals made by political families.
For my part, I eagerly await the findings of these federal and state inquiries into how “Blue Collar Joe” and the Biden family became so wealthy during his 50 years in Washington.
Guy W. Farmer is Appeal’s senior political columnist.

Laura J. Boyer